


beautiful ghost

by layton_kyouju



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Asexual Character, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, set during All in the Family, with a bonus flashback
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 16:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11832168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/layton_kyouju/pseuds/layton_kyouju
Summary: “Is there anything, you know, special or-?” She met his gaze with unyielding hazel, a silent request for more information.Strand could only stare, confusion swarming like hornets in his skull. “It was our honeymoon.”





	beautiful ghost

**Author's Note:**

> I'm doing another relisten to tbt before whatever hell awaits in the final season and god it fucks me up every time. I wish strand and coralee could have been happy. in s2e12 he says "I love my wife very much." he loves her and she loves him even after everything. end me. I wanted to write something with them happy but it still ended up sad.
> 
> also strand is very asexual.

It was bizarre being in that room after so many years, so many decades.

Like stepping through a portal back in time; same thick carpet, same vintage furniture, same ornate patterned comforter splayed across the bed. He felt detached from his own being, had to focus in order to feel the slow, measured breaths in and out of his lungs. The drum of blood through his ears.

It could have been that day all over again. They could have been happy again. As deep in love as when they exchanged their vows and retreated to each other’s embraces for the night.

But so much had changed.

He had changed.

“What now?” a voice behind him asked, breaking Strand from his thoughts.

Alex Reagan.

He was still upset with her. The renegade journalist had gone behind his back time and time again to dig into his past. Charlie, Cheryl, dredging up what he worked so hard to hide. To keep safe. The farther he tried to push away the more was brought to light. He didn't want the attention, the pity.

Then she popped up outside the Canadian hotel and he wanted to shuffle off this mortal coil.

But, if he were going to be honest, he needed all the help he could get. Considering the current state of  _ everything _ , despite his exasperation, he was grateful for Alex’s stubbornness. They had that in common. Along with the deep bruising beneath both their eyes from far too many sleepless nights.

Irritating as it may be to have one’s secrets exposed, at least there was someone who understood.

“I don’t know,” Strand admitted, voice stilted as he was caught in a rare moment of visible uncertainty. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“Well.” Her footsteps were muffled by the aged carpet as she brushed past him and moved deeper into the room. “Is there anything, you know, special or-?” She met his gaze with unyielding hazel, a silent request for more information.

Strand could only stare, confusion swarming like hornets in his skull. “It was our  _ honeymoon _ .”

Realization bloomed across Alex’s face, and she diverted her attention to the floor. “Right.” Her hand ruffled through her mussed hair, a clear sign she nodded off on the ferry ride there.

Painful silence. The idea of shadows consuming him would be a welcomed escape.

“Can you remember anything other than,” Alex paused, a smile-borderline-wince pulling at her lips and her shoulders tugged high when she looked back at him, “honeymoon stuff?”

••••••••••••••••••

She tastes of champagne and vanilla cake and too-sweet buttercream icing, but he couldn’t care less.

His tie is gone before the door of their suite clicks shut, as are her shoes and flower-adorned veil. Nimble fingers pop the buttons of his suit jacket and push it off his shoulders. Trail up his arms and wind around his neck. Pulling him close, guiding. She curses his unnecessary height with a giggle against his lips, and his insides melt into a sappy mess.

Larger hands wander up, free her hair from the tight bun that has stayed together for this long by the power of countless bobby pins. His fingers weave into the flow of curls that pour down.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Coralee mutters under her breath. Her shoulders jerk up and down as she battles with the zipper at her back. An amused huff escapes Richard’s nose as he leans back, and he receives a sardonic glance in return. He just smiles wider.

The zipper gives with a drawn out hum. “Ugh,  _ finally _ ,” she grunts, yanking the flowing garment down over her hips. A sea of white pools around her feet, which leaves her bare beyond her underclothes and stockings. “I swear they make them difficult to get out of on purpose.”

Chuckles bubble in Richard’s throat. Once his wife - his  _ wife  _ \- is upright he draws her back, cupping her jaw in his hands. The heat that surges through his chest as their lips meet almost knocks him to the floor.

And he’s her  _ husband _ . He repeats it over and over in his head, but he still can’t believe it.

Marriage was never something he foresaw for himself. Nor relationships, for that matter. It’s not as if he had the greatest role models when he was young. No archetype of the idealized, perfect family. Broken.

But with Coralee, with Charlie, perhaps they can achieve a semblance of normal. Meeting the high expectation of a typical family would be unrealistic, but a few degrees shy of it would be enough for him.

Her parents find him odd. He knows that. They don’t  _ not  _ like him, but there is a wariness in their eyes when they look at him. Distrust. The whole wedding ordeal was in part to get him on their good side. It didn’t work. At least they care about their new granddaughter. He can tolerate a bit of suspicion as long as Charlie is happy.

As long as he and Coralee can be together. She chases away the shadows that have always lurked just beyond his sight. Internal demons manifesting themselves because, as everyone knows, demons aren’t real. Only as real as the imagination and false belief of their witness.

She accepts him, trauma, baggage, cynicism, and all. And, truth be told, the prospect of them sharing their lives with each other in every sense is nice. It sends serene fluttering through the his being. Brings him down from heightened states brought on by old memories.

No distorted, towering figures watching from the darkened corners that are gone the instant he looks back. No ancient runes or sacred geometry spiraling around charred pentagrams and talking boards enchanted by “dark magic.”

Just them. Mr. and Mrs. Strand.

A playful shove sends him falling onto the satin duvet, and he can’t help but laugh. The sound is often stifled into curt breaths, but Coralee makes him  _ laugh _ . It’s an unabated low rumble in his chest that few others have heard.

She’s crouching over him, a smile of pure joy lighting the universe, so beautiful he could weep. The gap between them is crossed as she kisses along the contours of his face and her fingers drag through his hair. Her lips find the little spot just below his ear that never fails to make his breath hitch. Then the warmth is gone.

Richard opens his eyes, but the world is far more blurry than he remembered. He blinks and hears a soft clack of his glasses resting on the nightstand. The mattress beneath him adjusts as weight eases onto the bed, and dark ringlets tickle at his face. He doesn’t resist the grin that comes with Coralee’s presence when she cuddles against his side and gives him a peck on the cheek.

A hand rests on his torso, thumb trailing over the seam of his shirt. Richard places his own hand over top and brings it to his lips to kiss her knuckles. As he sets their entwined fingers back on his chest he looks at the way they fit together, the differences between them. He never considered himself to be pale, but he is in comparison to Coralee’s darker complexion.

Dull pain echoes through sore feet, drumming downward. He works a toe between his heel and the back of his dress shoe, creating the leverage to let it fall to the floor with a thud. The other follows suit. The tranquility, lying here, listening to their steady breathing.

But guilt eats its way into his thoughts. There is an unofficial expectation regarding honeymoons, regarding romance. He knows he should not berate himself, that Coralee understands, but when such things are permeated through every aspect of society it’s difficult to not feel insufficient. A disappointment.

“Richard?”

Anxiety boiling in his stomach. He had been too quiet, given some sort of tell that slipped past his guard.

She’s looking at him, worry pulling at her brow. Propping up on one elbow, she leans over his shoulder, lips drawn tight as those deep, brown, astute eyes read him like no one else’s can.

Her palm, so warm, rests on his cheek. Soft against his emerging scruff. He closes his eyes and relishes in her touch, turns his head to nestle into her hand and kiss the base of her thumb. Wrapping his arms around her, he embraces her, grounds himself in the beat of her heart and the swell of her chest with each pull of air.

He clears his throat. “I don’t think I,” but he doesn’t finish the thought, tries to swallow to no avail. He favors tucking his face into the bend of her neck.

Tepid breath shifts his disheveled hair.  She needs not hear more. “It’s  _ fine _ , sweetheart,” Coralee whispers, pressing a kiss to her husband’s forehead. “We’ve discussed this; you do not have to do anything to prove that you love me, especially not if it makes you uncomfortable.” She nuzzles his temple with her nose and holds him to her chest. Her fingers card through his hair, gentle, smooth routes trailing over his scalp. “How’s this?”

Richard locks his arms around Coralee’s waist. The thrum of her pulse dances around him, becomes his focal point as he closes his eyes and allows the rest of the world to slip away. “Good.”

She gives a soft hum; he can hear the smile on her lips. “Good.”

He folds his lanky frame around her, the exhaustion of a long, hectic day weighing down on him, making him sink further into the mattress and her warmth. A low grumble, muttered against Coralee’s shoulder. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.”

••••••••••••••••••

But then she was gone.

He grew old. Alone.

No family. Either they believed him to be the murderer of someone he loved so dear or disowned him for what he could not find.

No closure. Searching those endless and unforgiving woods for days, not even a body to prove where she was, where she had gone.

No red wheelbarrows. No white chickens.

He never could stop looking, though. Always on the hunt to find some trace, some flicker of her in every case he took on. Hoping.

Her voice on a time-worn tape, a mere glimpse of a past life an eternity ago. Found audio on the side of that forsaken highway. His heart ached with each passing second of the short clip. He had to pause it a number of times to recompose himself. It took longer than he would have anticipated.

Now, twenty years later, she had revealed herself.

Cryptic, mechanical messages left at the studio. Short, arcane, vague yet so precise. Nic and Alex thought it had just been some obsessed listener at first, but Strand knew.

She was speaking in a language only the pair of them could understand. Dickens, chickens.

Might as well have snapped open his ribs and ripped his heart from their grasp. At least that would have a physical display of what he felt when listening to the few words uttered by the computerized ghost from the past.

Haunted by those memories, those unknowns. He abhorred to imagine Alex’s smug grin at the analogy.

_ Don’t go. They know. _

Strand realized he had been silent for far too long, the journalist’s previous question hanging in the air like like a fog. His gaze swept over the room, scanning, analyzing, and it’s only then that he spotted a grotesque, familiar painting framed on the far wall.

Heavy brushstrokes of black, red, frenzied across the canvas. The sickening grin that contorts the macabre creature’s face and soulless eyes, the gore strewn across the blood-stained grass, the wolves’ fangs glistening crimson in the dim light. Hair, bone, a nauseating sense of foreboding that makes one almost smell the metallic viscera wafting through the air.

A twinge jolted through him, sharp, making him want to fold in on himself and fall to his knees. Let this all just fade away. The rigidity entangling his muscles prevented him from doing so.

He is startled by how flat his voice is as it passes his lips.

“I don’t remember  _ that _ .”


End file.
